A computer generated mosaic or compilation is a graphical representation that includes an intelligent arrangement of discrete tiles or sub-images collated to render an arbitrarily selected underlying image. Each individual tile can generally be of the form of a group of colored pixels or an image. A plurality of tiles are selected for placement in the mosaic from a corpus of images enable a rendering of an image on a user interface that, when viewed at a sufficient distance or angle, matches the underlying image. The quality of the mosaic that is generated is proportional to and dependent on the availability of an adequate number of tiles, that matches the distribution of color, gradient and orientation within the underlying image. As described above, each tile of a mosaic can be composed of individual images, such as photographs a person can take with, for example, a digital camera. Using photographs to produce a mosaic is particularly popular because it is possible to personalize the entire mosaic with images of a particular characteristic or theme (e.g., the faces of people, flowers, animals, etc.).